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July 18, 2014

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Nephew of the 10th Panchen carries out mission

Having a Panchen as uncle and recognized at a young age to inherit a grand monastery don’t grant a “rich second-generation” life. For Garwa Nyakwang Zangbo, head of the legendary Wendu Monastery in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, Qinghai Province, it means eating bug-infested barley noodles during childhood and working on construction sites in his middle age. Just as a popular Chinese idiom goes, he is pretty jie di qi or “feet on the ground” — not just an aristocratic lama nerd.

With such a busy life, Garwa Nyakwang Zangbo certainly doesn’t fit the stereotype of an unworldly entity who meditates all day and mumbles scriptures. In fact, he is quite big and tanned, from the physical labor that every lama or Tibetan monk has to perform. He also has a voice so deep and resonant that it assumes the role of the entire bass section in the chanting rites of the monastery, while the other 18 lamas sing tenor. Legend has it that his voice replaced the need for microphones in large monastery halls during rites.

More importantly, Garwa Lama is like you and me. He has an iPhone, even though he doesn’t know WeChat. His native language is Tibetan, but he is also fluent in Mandarin. He likes to talk to people about their troubles and his dreams. He is also a person who owes much gratitude to his parents and enlarges that compassion to the world.

With this compassion in mind, Garwa Lama is devoting himself to spreading Buddhism and benefiting the common people, following the steps of his uncle, 10th Panchen Choekyi Gyaltsen (1938-89), and his ancestor Drogön Chögyal Phagpa (1235-80).

“I’ve been a lama for more than 30 years, so I have to be responsible for the monastery. I’ve also been a Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee (CPPCC) member for more than 20 years, therefore I must be responsible for the country,” he says.

Buddhism praises wisdom, compassion and dharma. Garwa Lama has his dharma from a prominent family, compassion from religion. He is also a Hetuvidya logic and Madhyamika (study of the middle way) scholar.

These made possible his eight ongoing responsibilities. Apart from being appointed head lama of Wendu Monastery since 1988 by the Panchen, and being Xunhua County’s deputy chairman of CPPCC, he is managing the physical constructions of the late Panchen’s dreams.

The first two projects are linked directly to the welfare of the people and young lama scholars in Qinghai: a Buddhist school of Hetuvidya logic and a Tibetan-Western medicine hospital in the local Xunhua County, which lies south of the capital city of Xining.

“Not only did he bring peace to the Tibetan people, Panchen Choekyi Gyaltsen also commissioned trucks of Tibetan medicine to Xunhua when he was building the original Tibetan Medicine Hospital after his rehabilitation from the ‘cultural revolution’ (1966-76),” Garwa Lama says.

“In early years, those Dongfeng trucks were enormous, and they show how much Panchen master cared for the people and lama students. Panchen master also created a school of Tibetan Buddhist logic and a small Tibetan medicine hospital.”

In eight years, the schools fostered 50 doctors and 100 logic scholars. In a small county in the 1980s, the number is quite impressive. But the former glory soon faded until recently, when Garwa Lama took up the responsibility.

The newly built Tibetan School of Logic now rests at the foot of the smooth mountains surrounding Wendu Monastery, offering six years of knowledge in three years. There are currently 70 students. Next to the school is Garwa Lama’s other project, the largest stupa (Tibetan pagoda) in the Tibetan Buddhist area, designed by himself. It holds 10,000 big and little statues of Buddhas, according to Garwa Lama. He also plans to build a history museum of Tibetan Buddhism once the stupa is complete.

As for Panchen’s initial small hospital, “I changed the site to the center of town so more people can get access to it easily. Not only the ethnic Tibetans like it, the ethnic Salar Muslims also like it a lot,” Garwa Lama says.

Of Xunhua’s 120,000 residents, 90,000 are Muslim and 20,000 are ethnic Tibetan Buddhists. At the hospital, no queuing is visible, as people have three hospitals in the center of town to choose from.

The hospital combines Eastern and Western medicine. For example, it has 21st-century apparatus to treat cataracts, as well as traditional Tibetan woodblocks used in a way that’s similar to traditional Chinese medicine’s use of acupuncture and cupping.

Each patient will receive diagnosis from both the lama doctor and the doctor who studied Western medicine. The hospital has five doctors in each kind. The number will soon expand as the new five-story building is completed this October.

“Xunhua County is a nationally recognized county in poverty, so the prices of Tibetan medicine are very cheap,” Garwa Lama says. “A family would spend so much money and emotion on a patient, so how can I ask for money from them?”

As Buddhists often emphasize merits and virtues of one’s action, Garwa Lama says: “Doctors have the best virtues from lengthening patients’ life and relieving their families’ sufferings. Those who receive red envelopes (bribes) are making the lives of the patients’ families more miserable. We don’t need merchants but sincere people who empathize.”

Every month he gives the staff lessons on how to treat the patients with respect and benevolence, and his lessons are recorded, printed and hung on a bulletin board in the hospital.

The monastery

As the current (26th) head, or tulku (reincarnate lama), of Wendu Monastery, Garwa Lama inherited this role from his uncle. Unlike the common tulku lineages of reincarnation, this one is a blood lineage.

“Garwa” is the name for the lineage, just like “Panchen” is for the spiritual leader of Tibet.

Garwa Lama’s family — the Khon family of Sakyapa (“the gray earth”) — historically embraced the theocracy of Tibet. The smarter son of the Khon family became head of Wendu Monastery while the milder one assumed a political leadership role. After 1949, the political role disappeared, but the religious role remained.

The monastery is known in Tibetan as “bedo” (“calf”). The 10th Panchen was born near the monastery and trained here as a lama even before his teenage years.

Established in 1272 by the second Guru (spiritual teacher) Rinchen Gyeltshen (1238-79) of Kublai Khan (1215-94), Wendu Monastery is one of the earliest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Qinghai Province.

The air always smells fresh, as the monastery rests on an ancient river valley and is at least three hours by car from the nearest city. ºHowever, such a beautiful monastery was flattened to farm fields during the “cultural revolution,” and restored only by the initiative of the uncle and nephew.

“I became a lama here after I finished the 8th grade, around the year 1980. At that moment all lamas lived in tents, but Panchen master started renovating it in June that year. The 300,000 yuan offered by the Qinghai government was only enough to build the groundwork,” Garwa Lama recalls. “After Panchen master left this world in 1989, I took over the job to restore the monastery to its original glory.”

Garwa Lama also designed the new halls, including the 10th Panchen Memorial Hall and his spirit stupa, a Tibetan Buddhist pagoda to commemorate great souls. In total, more than 100 halls and rooms have been rebuilt since then.

“The spirit stupa of the Panchen master cost 5 million yuan, and it would have been impossible without the contribution of the Qinghai people and Qinghai government,” he says.

In 2006, Garwa accepted the Qinghai Buddhist Association’s donation of the Hongjue Monastery, a prominent Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) monastery that lost its former glory. A renovation was recently completed, with Garwa Lama designing the murals and architecture from scratch. Now a 9-story red hall looms over its former dark grey huts amid Xining’s tall buildings.

Life away from hunger

When Garwa Lama was 4, the Panchen’s family possessions were confiscated during the “cultural revolution,” and Garwa Lama and his mother were reduced to begging for food. “My father was sick. My mom begged on one side of the village and me on the other. It worked pretty well,” Garwa Lama smiles.

When he was a young lama at Wendu Monastery, he did manual jobs like carrying buckets of water and cooking that each lama must learn. When he studied at Drepung Monastery after becoming head of Wendu Monastery at the age of 20, he ate bug-infested barley noodles for four years, and had no money to go to the hospital.

“My room only had a doorframe as the monastery was in ruins. To make a bed I picked up some used bags and stuffed leaves. One winter day I returned and found my scriptures flying and disappearing into the cold wind. Panchen master didn’t give me a cent of allowance,” he says.

Garwa Lama’s hands waves in the air to mimic the movements of the scriptures. His frown diffuses and he smiles, “However, Panchen master taught me never to waste food. I used to be in the lowest academic rank of students, but that discipline brought me to the top.”

This is his 26th year as the head of Wendu Monastery. He wakes up at 4:30am every day and goes to sleep about midnight, chanting scriptures before he goes to bed, even when he’s traveling. Due to his practice of Esoteric Buddhism, a mysterious practice different from the more popular Mahayana Buddhism, he stops eating after lunch.

Buddhism serves the material world by “easing hunger and desire,” he says, “but Buddhism can only flourish in a strong society.”

Garwa Lama has met many troubled people across China. He doesn’t tell them to convert to Buddhism, but tells them that they should regard their job as the best way to practice Buddhist beliefs.

“I explained to an American once that Buddhists’ practice is like turning a mirror to ourselves. Usually, that mirror in our hearts looks out and reflects the vices of others, but practicing Buddhism is turning that mirror inward and wiping the stains of desire. We monks are not monks just because of the red cassock we wear. We practice and cultivate to rid our minds of selfishness, and it’s not easy. We look to great Buddhas and chant scriptures to remind ourselves what to do and what not to do,” Garwa Lama notes.

It was 8pm on June 30, and the setting sun suddenly lit up Wendu Monastery after a day of rain, and the roofs were bathed in golden rays.

The rain didn’t stop, but a double rainbow arched across the green mountains, directly facing 10th Panchen’s memorial hall. Garwa Lama said that it must be Mahakala, the Dharmapala, Sakyapa’s dharma-protecting deity. For 20 minutes the rain, the sun and the rainbows remained, and Garwa Lama prayed.




 

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